{"id":3914,"date":"2023-06-13T13:44:46","date_gmt":"2023-06-13T13:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/strongermarriages\/?p=3914"},"modified":"2023-06-13T13:44:46","modified_gmt":"2023-06-13T13:44:46","slug":"ted-danson-shares-how-cheers-ending-led-him-to-his-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/strongermarriages\/2023\/06\/ted-danson-shares-how-cheers-ending-led-him-to-his-wife.html","title":{"rendered":"Ted Danson Shares How &#8220;Cheers&#8221; Ending Led Him to His Wife"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_3916\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3916\" style=\"width: 768px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3916\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/413\/2023\/06\/ted-danson-credit-kathy-hutchins-shutterstock-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"ted danson\" width=\"768\" height=\"576\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3916\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kathy Hutchins\/Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Ted Danson recently shared that the end of his hit TV show &#8220;Cheers&#8221; made way for his romance with Mary Steenburgen, his wife of 28 years. Danson played Sam Malone, the lead character in the long-running series, which aired from 1982 to 1993.<\/p>\n<p>Danson reunited with co-stars John Ratezenberger, George Wendt and &#8220;Cheers&#8221; co-creators Les Charles, James Burrows, and Glen Charles for a panel discussion about the show during the ATX TV Festival in Austin, Texas. Danson admitted that he was why &#8220;Cheers&#8221; ended after 11 seasons. According to <em><a href=\"https:\/\/people.com\/ted-danson-was-mess-cheers-ending-led-reconnecting-with-wife-7507989\">PEOPLE Magazine<\/a>, <\/em>he said, &#8220;In my defense, we&#8217;d all been talking for a couple of years about ending the series.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Danson then added, &#8220;Okay, sorry. It was me.&#8221;\u00a0The &#8220;Good Place&#8221; star explained, &#8220;My life was a hot mess at the time, and if I had not stopped and gotten it together, I would never have met my wife.&#8221; They met for the first time in 1983 when he auditioned for the role of her on-screen husband in the biographical drama romance film &#8220;Cross Creek.&#8221; &#8220;I was married. He was married. That was not our moment,&#8221; Steenburgen said of meeting Danson in a 2021 interview with <em>PEOPLE.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The two reunited in 1994 when they co-starred as an on-screen couple in &#8220;Pontiac Moon.&#8221; Both had ended their marriages by that time. Steenburgen divorced her husband in 1990, while Danson and his wife split in 1993. The two established a friendship while working together on &#8220;Pontiac Moon.&#8221; Steenburgen told <em>PEOPLE, <\/em>&#8220;I wasn&#8217;t ready for anything like a relationship. We just kept working together and becoming better and better friends.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HgAN0Zu3yBc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The friendship bloomed into love during a canoe trip with friends in Mendocino, California. Danson told <em>PEOPLE <\/em>in 2021, &#8220;It was very magical. We came back in love, to be honest, or I&#8217;ll say smitten.&#8221; The couple tied the knot in October 1995 at a ceremony in Martha&#8217;s Vineyard. Then-U.S. President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hilary Clinton attended their wedding.<\/p>\n<p>After they married,\u00a0the couple\u00a0went on to work together in the TV series &#8220;Gulliver&#8217;s Travels&#8221; and &#8220;Curb Your Enthusiasm&#8221; and the 2004 romantic comedy &#8220;It Must Be Love.&#8221; Danson told <em>PEOPLE<\/em>, &#8220;I want as long as possible in my life with Mary. I know it will have all of its hard parts, but I want to experience love in all those moments.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In 2018, Steenburgen said she would &#8220;sign up for 100 more lifetimes&#8221; with Danson, adding, &#8220;There&#8217;s no hollow in my heart where I don&#8217;t love him, or where I doubt this love. There&#8217;s no secret place where I say we weren&#8217;t a thousand percent supposed to spend our life together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ted Danson recently shared that the end of his hit TV show &#8220;Cheers&#8221; made way for his romance with Mary Steenburgen, his wife of 28 years. Danson played Sam Malone, the lead character in the long-running series, which aired from 1982 to 1993. Danson reunited with co-stars John Ratezenberger, George Wendt and &#8220;Cheers&#8221; co-creators Les&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":3916,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[36,23],"tags":[45,526],"class_list":["post-3914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","category-relationships","tag-happy-marriages","tag-ted-danson"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ted Danson Shares How &quot;Cheers&quot; Ending Led Him to His Wife<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"During a recent panel discussion, former &quot;Cheers&quot; star Ted Danson talked about how the show&#039;s end helped foster his romance with his wife.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/strongermarriages\/2023\/06\/ted-danson-shares-how-cheers-ending-led-him-to-his-wife.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ted Danson Shares How &quot;Cheers&quot; 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